What we ended up doing was making tiny movies, that in tone and tact, became a metaphor for the kind of viewers that watch PBS," says Mark Sitley, director of broadcast production at Fallon, Minneapolis. Sitley is referring to two very successful Public Broadcasting System (PBS) ads, "Light" and "Photo Booth," that were recently nominated for the Emmy Award for best primetime commercial. Errol Morris, of bicoastal/international @radical media, directed the spots (along with four others), which are part of the network’s "Stay Curious" campaign.
"All we tried to do was come up with little concepts that were creative and refreshing examples of curiosity," says Sitley, who served as executive producer on the ads. The creative team at Fallon responsible for the spots consisted of president/executive creative director David Lubars, associate creative director Bruce Bildsten, art director Chris Lange, copywriter Michael Hart, and producer Damian Stevens, who is now an executive producer at bicoastal Moxie Pictures.
The PBS commercials were among five spots that were nominated for the Emmy award. The others are: Nike’s "Freestyle," directed by Paul Hunter of bicoastal HSI Productions, for Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore.; Mercedes-Benz USA’s "Modern Ark," helmed by Gerard de Thame of HSI and London-based Gerard de Thame Films, via New York agency Merkley Newman Harty & Partners (MNH); and another Mercedes spot, "Aaooga," directed by Victor Garcia of bicoastal Morton Jankel Zander, also through MNH.
"PBS came to Fallon to have themselves re-branded," relates Stevens. "In a lot of their programming, they thought their message was about curiosity. The creative team came up with this concept about staying curious. From there, all of these different scenarios came out," he says.
"Light" begins with a ringing alarm clock. A young girl shuts the alarm off—it’s 2:00 a.m. As she gets out of bed, it’s revealed that she has slept in her overalls and boots. Moments later, the girl, underneath a still-dark but starry sky, runs towards a barn, where she picks up an electric lantern. She slowly raises the lamp to gradually illuminate the barn’s interior. Inside, a rooster crows: the girl has succeeded at simulating a sunrise. The tag, "Stay Curious," appears, followed by the PBS logo.
In "Photo Booth," a man sits in a coin-operated photo booth. He dramatically mugs and gestures as the camera snaps numerous pictures. Cut to the man’s home as he carefully drops an old record player tone arm onto a crackly recording. It’s Enrico Caruso singing "Di Quella Pira," from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Il Trovatore. The man cuts out individual pictures from the photo booth filmstrips as he reads the music’s score. It’s clear what this opera lover has been up to when we see his creation: a flipbook of the man lip-synching to the Caruso performance. The "Stay Curious" tag follows.
Recognition
Sitley talks about what PBS wanted to accomplish with the ads. "PBS realized it had a dilemma on its hands," he explains. "What does PBS stand for in a world with a glut of cable channels like The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel and A&E? We found that as people channel surfed, they were watching PBS shows and forgetting they were on PBS, hence the need for greater brand recognition."
Sitley points out that PBS is a group of about 346 stations, all of which have somewhat different programming, so it was important that Fallon come up with promos that worked "no matter what the local station did." Fallon did find an attitude that all of the regional viewerships shared. "In doing focus groups around the country, one thing that always came up was that a PBS viewer or a future PBS viewer is someone with a sense of wonder and an open-minded sense of what’s going on in the world," he says.
Why did Fallon choose Morris, who in addition to spots, has also directed such acclaimed documentaries as Mr. Death and Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, to direct the ads? "I think as a filmmaker, you would find Errol Morris at the top of everyone’s list if you asked, ‘Who’s the filmmaker that actually pursues things with an innate, intractable curiosity?’" says Sitley. "Errol is great at dealing with the task at hand but doing it with a sense of non-commercial integrity."
"We arrived at Errol Morris because he’s such an interesting director from a documentary standpoint," relates Stevens. "He had done some really simple spots for Miller High Life [out of W+K] that we really liked. We used that along with his films as a basis for going after him."
According to Sitley, a number of directors were interested in the project despite the fact they would be donating their labor to the project. And regular Fallon vendors, such as post house Fisher Edit, Minneapolis, and audio company Wow & Flutter, Minneapolis, provided their services at a discounted rate. "They were willing to donate their time and a lot of effort to the edit," states Sitley. "It sort of seems wrong when PBS is in need of funding, to not work with people that are close to you and to ask them to do you a favor."
What does Stevens think about not one, but two spots, he helped produce being nominated for an Emmy? "I think it’s great," he says. "I know there’s a lot of competition, but being that we have two out of five, I think PBS has really good odds."
